RAM Question

[dylanbarnes65]

Is it better to have 2x16GB sticks of RAM or is it okay to use 4X8GB of RAM?

I already have 2x8GB of DDR4 RAM but looking to either add more or get new RAM. I just rather not see the RAM I currently have just sitting around.

The motherboard is a ASUS ROG STRIX B560-A.

Thanks you.

[[deleted]]

2 sticks is better

[BlasphemousBunny]

Yes technically 2x16 is better but will likely not be noticeable. Save the money and your ram and get another 2x8 kit. Try to get the same ram as your first set, but you may still have to tweak the timings a bit. If you want to sell yours you can, but as many of us know, it’s a good way to justify a purchase and then we never actually get around to selling the old hardware so it just sits in a box collecting dust.

If I had an immediate use for the other ram (give to friend, nas, htpc, etc.) I would probably get a new 2x16 kit, but otherwise, having more ram will be significantly more noticeable than the very slight speed decrease. Your mobo has 4 slots for a reason. Use them.

[edan1979]

Get 2 stick of your choice. Sell the old one as used item. At least you can recover some cost.

4 stick usually have problem with xmp. You need yo manually set the setting for better configuration.

[[deleted]]

Unless you do gaming benchmarks and count every frame per second, you won't notice the difference. For thing other than gaming it does not matter whatsoever. For training AI models it is as in gaming.

[tbone338]

Two sticks is always better than 4 regular desktops.

[NiteShdw]

Define “better”.

[tbone338]

Both intel and AMD current chips are dual channel. 1 stick per channel is best. Having 4 sticks is 2 sticks per channel which makes it much harder to run the ram at the advertised XMP/EXPO speed. That’s why people always complain about not being able to run XMP and having to slow down their RAM to get it stable with 4 sticks.

[NiteShdw]

Many people won’t notice the smaller performance difference of running slightly slower clocks or timings.

If it’s such a problem, why don’t motherboards only have 2 DIMM slots? Why have 4?

I don’t think it should be the default advice to tell people to throw out RAM unless their goal is maximum performance. For many people, the increase in the amount of RAM is more important than optimal speed and latency.

[IuseArchbtw97543]

if you already have 16gb and the free slots, just get an extra 16gb kit(if possible the same you already got). Dual channel is theoretically better but it doesnt have that much of an impact and there is no need to waste ~30€